Moved to the beach and quickly discovered I needed to shape up. So totally vanity. Now I'm actually enjoying the experience of the gym. I gave up golf and mostly tennis and have put gym as my "sport." I look forward to the feel of working out, pretty much every day (unless my body tells me to take a day off, to which I listen), the pleasure of being in the company of fit guys, nice guys, too, and the energy lift I get from it. I work out from 6-8 every evening and in the mornings on the week end. In two hours, I can get in some cardio, stretching, hit the weights hard for one body part, shower and be out the door feeling great. The exercise (and protein shake) lowers my appetite, makes me more focused on eating a healthy dinner, and delays my first glass of wine. And I like the results. I'm in the best shape of my life and like the way I'm now shaping and balancing the muscularity. From the neck down, I look pretty good! Can't do much about that other part.

uberick saidFor gay guys.. it is definitely to look more attractive.. and may be for some,.. it is the locker room that motivates them..

Which is why some of the oldies get super offended at our modesty in the changing rooms :// No one eants guys leering at them in the chsnging room or in the gym so no we won't be supporting shirtless gyms/ get nude in locker rooms thanks.

uberick saidFor gay guys.. it is definitely to look more attractive.. and may be for some,.. it is the locker room that motivates them..

Which is why some of the oldies get super offended at our modesty in the changing rooms :// No one eants guys leering at them in the chsnging room or in the gym so no we won't be supporting shirtless gyms/ get nude in locker rooms thanks.

You guys are getting a bit shrill about this. Trust me, it's all in your heads. No one wants to see your pee pee. And why pollute an unrelated thread with your paranoia? Give it a rest.

I used to train so I could compete - then because it felt good and I enjoyed training with my athletes; now it's for health and to loose some of the pounds I gained during two years of surgery. Got to admit - it hurts more now! And it's harder to hang onto delusions of being fit and trim!

To say that exercising has nothing to do with vanity would be a lie for most. However, it's also not the only reason. There are many health benefits (including being more "happy"). In the end, it's one of the better "addictions".

Social scientists predicted decades ago that men would start being judged on attractiveness throughout their adulthood as women achieved economic equality. The logic was that financially successful women would effectively look for "boy toys" much the same way older wealthy men sought out young and dumb women.

The gay community is more intense about this; for various reasons there is heavy emphasis on physical attractiveness and this seems to percolate through most stages of adulthood. Even in my twenties I recall gay guys being almost contemptuous of other young guys who weren't up to snuff in the looks department. For some of them it was almost like unattractiveness in others was a personal affront, lol.

Well - vanity is part of the reason I'm in the gym 3 times weekly. Mostly though, it's the high I get out of working out. I feel great each time I come out of the gym after a good work out consisting of squats, bench press, bench pulls, power cleans, split jerks, hang cleans, Olympic lifts and 20 min. of cardio. I swim laps (1000 yards at least) on the other two days. Saturdays are cycling days and Sundays are r and r days.

Vanity? Yes, but mostly to take good care of myself as time rolls on. We get only one body, and it is our most valuable possession, so why not treat ourselves like gold?

I had my fitness review a few weeks back and the instructor asked me why i decided to join the gym. I said because I want to increase my confidence and get out of the house and socialize more, and pretty much danced around the whole "want to look better" reason, and then he said "I don't care what people say, we're all a bit vain and we all want to look good in the mirror."

So yeah, i do want to look better and have a better body, but there's still that part of me that doesn't want to admit it. Maybe its because I was so shy and timid when I was younger and never liked sport growing up and always had a negative attitude towards it, then I did go through a phase where I started getting into fitness, then I gave up on it and lost my confidence. But getting over those doubts and joining the gym and making a commitment to it. And seeing blokes with great bodies prompts me to stick around a bit more and push myself a little harder. Why be a lazy little shit my whole life? Being lazy is not going to attract any attention or admiration.

Import saidPeople work out for a variety of reasons. Working out due to vanity is not a new phenomenon . I think it's safe to say that most people want to look good and feel good about themselves.

That's a very strong motivator. Along with a new awareness of concepts of good health and longevity of life.

Decades ago this was rarely discussed & considered very seriously by most people. Today's food guidelines hardly existed. Even the dangers of smoking were still being hotly debated. Trust me, I lived through it.

And the emphasis in exercise for personal health purposes was almost unknown. Most exercise was related to some kind of sports, your primary motivation being to be competitive. The idea of exercise for its own sake, as a healthy pursuit, was hardly known.

Exercise for school children started to come into vogue during the Kennedy Administration. With a formal National Fitness Program. Part of it was Cold War driven, the idea that Americans were getting too flabby & weak, and would be unable to defend the country against the Commie threat.

Today societal standards and vanity play a large role. But so do medical studies that prove that being fat and out of shape can be a cause of you suddenly dropping dead of a heart attack at too early an age. This kind of empirical evidence wasn't as firmly established decades ago.

It's getting more attention today. More people are trying to follow good health guidelines. My only problem with them is they keep changing, especially about diet. During my lifetime certain foods have been declared good, bad, good, bad, and good again. It does shake your confidence in the pronouncements of these "experts".

But I'm also sure they'll eventually get it permanently correct, as the science improves. More importantly, people WANT to do what's right, with a greater appreciation for these issues. Whereas when I was growing up, nobody hardly had a clue, nor gave it much thought. You ate as you liked, and only exercised if you were interested in doing serious competition. Gyms were for athletes, not for the rest of us.

And our bodies looked as they looked. The natural outcome of age and heredity. Other than makeup for women, and some rudimentary work with plastic surgery, you accepted what life dealt you. To quote the comedian Flip Wilson from the 1960s, when doing drag: "What you see is what you get!" That applied to yourself as well as to others.

ANTiSociaLiNJUSTICeWarior saidI'm almost done losing the twenty pounds that I gained over the past few years. I really notice a difference in how people treat me. I wasn't obese compared to some people. But my waist was a 38" for a while. Now I'm back down to a 32" and have almost reached my goals. Thanks to paleo eating and intermittent fasting, it hasn't been hard at all.

Good observation. After my rotator cuff injury in late 2012, I gained about 30 pounds for the two years following that. It was not because I didn't want to work out. I was as motivated as ever. But I was actually in pain for almost three years, literally, which prevented me from working out to my old level. I really wasn't even eating any differently. After I finally healed my shoulder injury last last year, I started accelerating my exercise levels. I joined the Weight Watchers program this past March and have lost a ton of weight. I now weigh what I did when I was 25, and it feels great! And people do treat me differently, it's really weird. Maybe I have more confidence then I did when I was heavier, I really don't know.

If vanity and peer pressure are having this effect, they must be pretty damn weak.

I have a hard time accepting that 5'8 guys who can easily look more buff than me with half of my gains don't make use of the privilege in spite of the huge rewards and relatively small investment (they have more visual results in 4 years than I had in 8 )

Peer pressure must be pretty weak if the hare is asleep while the tortoise wins the race.

The hares are asleep because they believe the narrative that attractiveness is entirely subjective, that there are no hierarchies, "fat acceptance" and so on. Why should they work out if (according to the narrative) they have nothing to gain? Peer pressure is not even close to facing those popular myths.

I've never been a member of a gym, fitness is a daily lifestyle for me, and swimming, biking and working out at home or the beach are part of my routine. It makes me feel good and keeps me stress free.

I have multiple motivations for working out. My best motivation is to improve my tennis performance. Tennis motivates me a lot. Vanity is in there. As are health concerns and improving my moods. Strength training is good for anxiety, cardio is good for depression.